Do I Look Scared to You?
by Empathist
Summary: A one-shot story from Brendan Brady's point of view, following the events of new year's day 2012.


You're already having a bad day.

You saw the new year in last night with a bottle of Jameson's for company, because the thought of waiting for midnight in a partying crowd was absurd. The artificial optimism of it, you find pathetic.

This morning, the whiskey bottle is more than half empty, and you get up late and swallow some painkillers.

You let yourself into the club, and it looks like a riot has hit it. Nothing has been cleared or cleaned since the punters went home. A lad emerges from the shadows: he must have spent the night here, whoever he is. As he passes you on his way out, he wishes you a happy new year, and pats your face. What the fuck?

Your sister is upstairs. She tells you cheerily that Warren Fox, before you got him nicked, had told the cleaners they didn't have to work on new year's day. He's still an irritant, but the mention of his name gives you a momentary jolt of life: engineering his downfall had given you a purpose, while you were in prison and since you got out. In the week or so since you succeeded, you've struggled to find a reason to get up. You kidded yourself that shaving off your beard and putting a suit back on would kickstart you, but it hasn't worked out like that, not so far. Because you're a different man from the one who went in through those prison gates, and with the hunting of Foxy concluded, you've got to figure out who you are now.

Cheryl hands you a bag for the rubbish, but before you resign yourself to the menial task, Stephen comes up the stairs. He and Cheryl kiss on the cheek and, like a reflex, you recall the feel of his freshly-shaved face against yours. He doesn't look at you. _Where d'you want me?_ he asks. You can't tell if he means to provoke.

You thrust the binbag at him with an insult, and leave him to it.

:::::::

The place is clean and tidy again; Stephen's done a good job, in spite of the attitude that radiates off him.

Punters are arriving. You're carrying a coffee, and some girl bumps into you and it slops into the saucer. She calls you Warren, but you know her, she's one of the McQueens, Michaela. She was here the night of Chez Chez's opening party, playing at being a journalist and trying to stitch you up because you'd punched Stephen to the floor, and she'd got wind of it and thought it was a story she could sell. You know that she knows your name. She's best mates with Amy, too, so she'll have had all the gossip, the malice and the half-truths about your time with Stephen.

She orders coffees from you, and just like that lad downstairs, she pats your face; and then the boy she's with, he touches you too. It's as if they think you're not someone to be reckoned with.

You sit at the end of the bar with what's left of your coffee. Cheryl and Stephen are at the other end, thick as thieves, and you hear him say to her that you should be thanking him for carrying the place while you were away. Thanking him? Wasn't it the least he could do, while you were rotting in jail?

You order him to re-stock the fridges. He doesn't move, and you tell him again, because if he doesn't get out of your sight you're going to lose your temper. And you don't want to do that, because if he sees you lose control, he'll know that he's still under your skin. He goes, surly and ill-used, and you watch him. He can't really have grown, can he? He seems somehow more of a man than he was a few months ago, less fragile, more present.

Michaela McQueen hollers at you for those coffees she ordered. This time, she calls you Bernard. You've had enough disrespect, and you go.

:::::::

You never did get used to seeing yourself with the beard. In prison, the only mirrors were for shaving, so you barely saw your reflection at all. When you got out, you found that looking in a mirror unnerved you, and when you finally shaved and looked at yourself with a moustache again, you still seemed a different man.

You stand in the washroom in the toilets at the club, your face inches from the mirror. You've heard people come and go, watched their reflections, noticed their chatter ceasing as your stillness makes them uncomfortable. And then Stephen enters, hovering in the doorway. No chance of his chatter ceasing, not this boy. You don't move.

He thinks you might want to talk about prison. He's not scared of you any more, he says, and you remember when he was: the fear in his eyes as he shrank from you, when you had hurt him and he thought you would again.

_I know what it can be like inside_, he tells you, and it's laughable. Playing pool in Juvenile Offenders and having a crush on a mate? If he knew what had happened to you... He must have heard a bit about it, Cheryl would surely have told him; but she didn't know the half of it.

_I think I know you more than_ anyone, he says. Is that right? Is that why he thought you'd killed Rae and all those other girls, because he knows you so well? You want to ask him, _Why?_ You want to tell him that the knowledge that he believed that of you, was worse than the beatings you took; but you can't, because you can't let him see how weak you were.

_You're scared I'll be able to see right through you._ And he has seen, at least he's seen how you _were_, but you're not going to be like that any more, you're stripping out of your life anyone who made you care about them, because caring is insidious, it peels layers off you until you can't protect yourself any more.

You grab him by the front of his hoodie and shove him against the door.

_Tell me, Stephen, do I look scared to you?_ The boy looks shocked, as if he didn't know you still had fire inside you; but he doesn't close his eyes or look away. This is the closest you've been to him since before prison, and you can feel his heat, and you can feel your pulse racing. _Do I look scared?_ you repeat, and you shake your head, prompting him to do the same, and you confirm it to him and to yourself: _No_, you say.

You want to kiss him, and you want to kill him. You tell him, _Go_, only no sound comes out; but he understands anyway, and leaves. You catch his scent in the air as he goes. His aftershave is new: the cheap spray he used to wear has been replaced by something more subtle. You wonder who gave it to him.

For a moment you feel disorientated. You touch the place where Stephen's back had been leaning, and feel his shadow there.

:::::::

It's Anne's turn next, or has she come as Mitzeee today? She wants something. She reckons getting Foxy banged up benefitted both of you, and she's right, so why does she want more?

You ask her if she ever thought about the girl Foxy killed. _When you were lying next to him? When he touched you?_ Because you wonder about that. You wonder if Danny Houston came into Stephen's mind when he was lying with you, when you'd been inside him, when you kissed him and held him. You wonder if it haunted him, the knowledge that you'd killed a man, and that's why it wasn't such a leap to believe you'd killed those girls. You wonder if that's what he sees when he looks at you, the thing that's front and centre; the fact that you're a killer obscuring everything else that you are. You wonder if that's why he couldn't love you. He told you once that he didn't love you any more, and you've learnt that it was true.

Anne doesn't answer.

She doesn't want gratitude, unlike Joel did for having a loyalty so flexible that he switched sides in a heartbeat and kindly decided not to shoot you. No, she wants money, a loan to get back on her feet. Never mind that you got rid of the man who might have murdered her. Pathetic. She'd been sleeping with him even as she schemed with you against him, and so you know she takes easily to duplicity: you can't care for her, knowing that she has it in her to betray you as she did her lover. _Unlike you,_ you tell her, _I never needed anyone._

She's hurt, but feisty. That's why you like her. Liked. She squares up, all five-foot-nothing of her, and spits out a curse: _I should've let him kill you when he had the chance._

For a second you wish he had, and say, _Yeah._

Stephen passes her on the stairs as she runs out, notes her distress, looks at you. You blank him.

There's a lad sat at the bar, and your gaze falls on him. You'd noticed him earlier too. Cute. Alone.

For now, you walk away.

:::::::

The club has filled up. People have emerged from their hangovers to work on getting new ones.

You've had enough of the noise and the shiny happy people. You're leaning in the doorway of the office, watching that lad. He's still on his own.

Stephen appears by your side. He refers to Mitzeee, makes some dig about you picking on girls.

_Know the best thing about prison, Stephen? Not having to listen to your whining voice, day in, day out. _You're lying. In prison, he was ever present, his voice, his face, everything, your first thought when you woke in the morning, and your last at night; and then when you slept, he was in your dreams. Sometimes you dreamt about loving him; other times, he would turn on you, ablaze with anger. In the worst of your dreams, you were calling out to him but he couldn't hear you. Every day of your life, he is in your head.

Cruelty tastes delicious on your tongue, it's addictive, and you say, _Get your stuff, you're fired._ Stephen is incredulous and then angry. You have made him _feel._

It'll be better when he's gone, because you can't think straight when you're with him. So now, you're going to make sure he knows you don't need him.

You're still looking at that lad at the bar. The lad sees you looking, and sees you coming for him. As you stalk towards him, splitting the crowd to let you through, you can't tell if the pounding you can hear is coming from the speakers or is inside your skull. You reach him, put a hand around the back of his head, and kiss him.

It's the second time in your life that you've kissed a man in public. The first time was in this place too, and the memories of it assault you: the fear of it conquered by the necessity of doing it; the frantic sex you had with Stephen that night; the battering you gave him in the morning. That was when his love died.

This lad's mouth tastes of wine.

You let go of him and head for the stairs. You don't need to check that he's following you, because you know he is: he's been drinking alone in a busy bar on new year's day, what else has he come here for? When you look at Stephen as you pass him on your way out, he looks as if he's been punched. Your heart clenches like a fist.

:::::::

The cold air outside is a relief. You walk home quickly, the lad beside you. At the front door, you fumble with your keys and drop them. A memory is stirred, but you stamp on it. You go inside, fling your coat down, and head for the Jameson's.

_Can I use your bathroom, mate?_

He has a Liverpool accent, and as you turn to face him you almost expect to see Vincent, with his unruly blond hair and a smile like sunshine. That's why you can't care about people: because the ones you care about will gut you.

This boy looks more like Macca, they have similar colouring. But the resemblance is superficial: there was a challenge in Macca's brown eyes that's absent here, an invitation to you to do your worst.

You tell him where the bathroom is, then pour yourself a drink. The spirit burns you, and you feel recharged.

You haven't had sex in months. In prison, there were lads who were passed around among the men. It was all commerce and bartering: tobacco, mobile phones, protection, beatings, boys. It was only the straight men who could fuck those lads, though; if there were rumours about you, you didn't dare risk it because it would confirm those rumours. The irony made you laugh. Anyway you weren't tempted, not even by the impudent lad with the dirty blond hair that flopped over his forehead, and cheekbones like knives.

When the boy comes back downstairs, you ask him if he wants a drink. He says no, and comes to you, and you grab hold of his head with both hands and kiss him hard, your tongue thrusting to the roof of his mouth, just so he's clear what he's getting.

_You wanna do this?_ you ask, and he smiles and nods. You walk into your bedroom.

You get his clothes off first, with his help. His T-shirt and boxers look new: Christmas presents maybe, and for the first time you see him as an actual person, not a solution to a problem.

He watches, perched naked on the edge of the bed, as you get undressed – you don't let him undress you. When you strip off your sweater he says, _Bloody hell_, and says it again when your boxers come off. His cock tells you that _bloody hell_ is a good thing. With Stephen, you never needed to check his cock to know he was aroused: his blue eyes would blacken and, reflected in them, you'd see everything you wanted.

You tell the boy to kneel on the bed. He does as he's told, but first he pulls back the cover, as if being _in_ the bed rather than _on_ it makes this nicer. It's endearing. You get a condom out of the drawer. Maybe you should check its expiry date – it's been there for months – but you don't, and you roll it on. You hold up a bottle of lube, and ask him, _You want this?_ He looks a little worried, hesitates, then nods. You'd hoped he would say no, because you want to hurt him. You want to hurt someone, anyhow, and he's the one that's here.

You could take him, easily: you're much bigger and stronger than him. You've always been strong, at least since you were a teenager. People underestimated you because you were skinny, but you fought dirty and showed them they were wrong. In prison, you acquired a whole new body. You worked out constantly in there, through boredom and necessity, and as you adjust to wearing your new muscles in the outside world you are acutely aware of what they present: physical threat, and sexual promise.

You've never forced anyone, though, not once in your life; never come close. What you do is, you make them want you. That's where your sexual power lies.

You smear a blob of lube onto the tip of your condom, then stand behind the boy as he kneels on the edge of the bed, and he gets on all fours. You spread him and have a look. He looks clean, and there's no bruising or swelling: perhaps he doesn't do this every day, then. You touch his ring with your thumb, and it twitches. You pump some more lube onto your fingertips and slather it onto him, then reach around and give his cock a stroke or two. He groans.

Gripping his hip with one hand, you guide yourself into him with the other. It feels fantastic. You keep hold of his hip as you get deeper inside him, and your other hand strokes up the smooth skin of his back and grasps his shoulder. He turns his head to bite your wrist.

He's good, this boy. The muscles inside his arse tighten rhythmically, and as you drive into his body he rocks back to meet you. He gasps as he breathes in, moans as he breathes out.

You come a bit too soon. Well, it's been a while. You lift him upright so his back is against your body, and hold him there with one arm around his belly. There's a little bit of flesh there, it feels vulnerable and soft. You wank him off, sinking your teeth into the skin of his neck, and he spills onto the mattress.

Then you go upstairs to the bathroom to clean yourself up. In the mirror you see dark circles under your eyes; you feel disconnected from the man you see.

When you return to your bedroom, the lad is in the middle of the bed, the cover pulled up to his chin. You tell him to move over. _It's wet there though,_ he says, so you squeeze in on the dry side and let him stay in the middle, and allow him to tuck himself under your arm. Maybe this is what you've missed, not the sexual release – you can do that for yourself – but the sensation of a man's body beside you, his skin against yours.

You always slept easily with Stephen in your arms, and if you woke you would lie listening to him softly breathing until you drifted off again. Tonight, though, you can't sleep. Maybe it's because this lad is a stranger. Or perhaps the cycles of his body – his breaths, the beats of his heart – are not in sync with your own.

You hear the girls get home. They go straight upstairs to their rooms, and you guess that Cheryl had rung Lynsey to tell her you'd picked up a man, and Lynsey had gone to the club to wait for her to finish work so that they could deal with any situation here together. There is no situation though.

Eventually tiredness overcomes you and you drop off. Stephen is in your dream again: you see his face in the mirror as he asks if you want to talk about prison, and when you wake up you know with utter certainty that whatever you'd thought his intention was, he was genuinely being kind. There is a moment when you think the boy in your bed is him, but as reality hits you, you feel a surge of anger that you still feel the loss.

You look at the clock, the one Stephen had trouble telling the time on. It's nearly two o'clock.

You shudder, and the boy stirs. You could wake him up, fuck him again, feel invincible again. Because you did, when you screwed him earlier: you felt triumphant, and you could try to recapture that feeling right now.

He's awake now. Your arm is around his shoulders, and he looks at you with a sleepy smile, and his hand takes hold of yours as if he thinks he has a right to do that.

You sit up, get up, pull on your boxers. Tell him, _You need to go._ He looks puzzled, stays put. _Now,_ you snarl, and he looks scared, and you feel scared because you know that if he doesn't get out you will batter him: and you can't, you can't go back to prison. You pick up his scattered clothes and throw them onto the bed, then go out of the room and pour a whiskey. The glass rattles against your teeth as you swig it down.

By the time he emerges, dressed, from your bedroom, you have got a grip. _My sister's place, see,_ you tell him, and offer him some money for a cab. He's insulted, and won't take it. You both stand awkwardly while he rings for the taxi; you have to tell him this address.

_Okay if I wait for it here?_ he asks. You nod. Then he asks if you want his number, and before you can say no, he's spotted the pad and pen beside the phone and written it down. You won't look at it: as soon as he leaves, you'll screw it up and bin it, because you don't want to know his name.

The cab firm calls to say the car's outside. You go to the front door with the lad. He looks smaller somehow than he did when you picked him up in the club. You notice the mark of your teeth on his neck. _You okay, son? y_ou hear yourself ask. He says, _Yeah_, and kisses your lips, quickly and softly. You manage not to flinch. Then you open the door for him, and he's gone. The other boy isn't gone, though, the one who's in your head every day.

You rip the sheet off your bed and stuff it into the washing machine, then fetch your duvet and lie down on the sofa with it wrapped around you, and shut your eyes.

You need to see Stephen. Maybe he'll come to the club tomorrow to ask for his job back, although you doubt it: he's a stubborn little bugger. You need to see him though, to test yourself. You need to find out if what you've done here tonight has loosened his hold on your heart.


End file.
